


La Danse de l'Automne

by Fyliwion



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Autumn, Busking, Depression, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Music, Reunions, Romance, Slow Build, Violins, haitus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 19:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4679327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyliwion/pseuds/Fyliwion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Fate had never let them drift far from her hand. Their souls and minds were tied up in threads so knotted and snarled that whatever time had written and rewritten they would always be there.</i>
</p><p>  <i>Always waiting at the end of all things, two roads colliding in catastrophe with two hearts beating as one. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	La Danse de l'Automne

Crisp.

The autumn air was flooded with a thousand scents of the approaching winter, and there was a bite in the air that foretold summer had long forsaken the London streets.

A flood of coloured leaves swirled around the paving stones, fluttering onto the last remnants of grass that held out a startled green and waited for the first true frost to capture it's sprigs and turn them white with winter.

He might not have noticed the man at all. He might have walked right past with the early morning passers-by, the flurry of jackets and coats, bundled scarves and first season mitts. His own thoughts were a thousand miles away and nowhere at all at once.

Yet the first note of strings sauntered through the cold wind, and the peal that struck John Watson would not be ignored.

It hung there, lingering in the air, fluttering like a butterfly caught in a moment's life cycle. That brief hour between life and death, just before it's fall back into the earth from whence it came. Beauty and tragedy folded into one, and all hanging on a single solitary sound.

His feet stopped, crunching into the fresh fallen leaves, and sending them cascading onto the steps.

Around him a woman buried herself in her phone, a man pushed his way through late for work, a student on her way to class with a tea in one hand and a pastry in another, a thousand other bodies all lost in the sound of morning rush, and only one thing remaining.

A final breath John Watson found himself unable to take.

He shoved his fingers into his pockets even as his footsteps quickened.

The strings continued their relentless harmony, each new chord another heart beat, another striking memory that brought breath to his lungs and set his mind a'whirl.

Nothing remained but the melody. Nothing remained but for the notes that wrapped themselves about him like a soft embrace. He could feel them tighten around his heartstrings and fill his veins.

The wind picked up, the sunlight dancing through the branches of the park, and for the first time in what seemed like years morning actually breaking in her glory.

When he saw him there, bathed in the pale gold of autumn, he wondered if he’d gone mad. A pristine violin tucked under his chin, held with all the tenderness of a child as his fingers flew across its neck.

Tousled curls fluttered around the too thin face, pale skin, white as the snowfall that was soon to come, blue eyes that hadn't yet seen him.

Long eyelashes that fluttered in tune to the music.

In another time, another place it had been anger that motivated John Watson.

A world away the fear, the pain, the almosts had filled his fists and his mind. Another autumn that had been late in coming and broke into an early winter. A storm that had surged with pain and anguish and had followed years of never ending rain from which there was no respite, no shelter, nothing but darkness with a chance of salvation in the form of forgetting.

Another time, another life, another John Watson faced with the reality that he hadn't looked close enough, hadn't waited long enough, hadn't been strong enough.

Blue eyes begging for a forgiveness he had found himself unable to give.

Again, and again, and again.

Broken noses, broken cheeks, broken wrists, broken vows.

Nothing filling a void that told him there would never be a spring again. Never the perfect season that eighteen months or eight years had done so well to encapsulate.

Another song wrought in dissonance.

Blue eyes, long lashes, both turning his way with a wary smile that wove into the music rather than shown on the face.

Was this how it felt to be Sherlock Holmes? A mind always racing three steps ahead and that never stopped it’s wanderings? To never have silence, never quiet, never ceasing it's relentless toil on what is right, good, or just best? Was there such a thing at all?

To allow the music to wipe it clean, to do what nothing else, no amount of anger or pain or alcohol or drugs could possibly break. To throw back a thousand thoughts and ideals, left in it's place one clear crisp autumn morning that might, just might, hold in it's wake a solution?

Even from afar John could see the jacket was too light for the weather, the shirt too threadbare to be his, it was nothing like the last time, with the dirt and the grime and the question of dust beneath his nose or injections in his arm.

Nothing like before that, when he was too tired and broken to see the exhaustion and pain hidden behind the façade of a smile. Unseen scars that ripped across the skin and bore into the soul.

Now there was the sleeplessness, the exhaustion, the hint of old injuries, and travel warned clothes. There was a satchel, a case, and a way he held his body that spoke of someone else than the man who he was.

Yet he had always been as malleable as a newly shaped melody. Built around whatever intrigue he was pulled on, written for whatever new challenge was presented to him, changing like the autumn leaves that broke off the branches and drifted away just before you dared to reach out and take them.

To John Watson he had been all the seasons in their extremes: the harshest winter and brightest summer. Spring and fall at their cusps, leaving him questioning and waiting in the unknown.

And now the north wind blew, and nothing was the same.

Even as the sun promised something new.

Pinpricks rose on the hand holding the bow. They travelled to his wrist, and rose along the span of neck that shone pale against the flash of sun rays that played against the expansion. The clothes doing little to off-beat the chill. And the damned coat, the woollen figure that had always wrapped itself like a darkened shadow, an armour that allowed no one to touch or see, the coat that gave him a name and kept him away, the coat was nowhere to be seen. A knight without armour, left out in the cold.

There was a crowd now, children dancing to a more rousing tune with mother's watching on, tears in their eyes.

There were businessmen stopping mid-stride, there were women eyeing their prospects, and younger men undressing him with their gaze. There was the halting steps of those too old to hear until they grew close, and who sat on abandoned benches to warm their faces in the glow of the sound.

John waited.

He had waited years after all. Waited months and hours. Waited through the times he'd held cold metal with a steady hand. Waited through the bottom of bottles, through fury and passion that could not be abated, through darkness so thick he was certain there was nothing at the end but the mouth of a gun.

Instead, a ray of sunlight and a sound so soft it was a kiss upon the cheek, a lover's embrace he never thought to behold.

Ice blue eyes melting into skylight and holding his.

A smile meant just for him.

A song that he had never heard before, but brushed his temples and caressed his cheeks. That dressed his wounds, and pushed away the shadows with a tenderness he'd thought incapable.

It was a dance writ for just them. For all the crowds, the onlookers, the fleeting eyes and pushing arms. For the happen-stance of the meeting or inevitability of coming together, after all how often had _he_ said there was no such thing as coincidence?

Fate had never let them drift far from her hand. Their souls and minds were tied up in threads so knotted and snarled that whatever time had written and rewritten they would always be there.

Always waiting at the end of all things, two roads colliding in catastrophe with two hearts beating as one.

The bow fell from his fingers, the song ending, the strings going still, and the smile less certain.

Questions.

Thousands of questions, all the same and all different, all bearing on the hope of a single moment that could make or ruin them both.

The cold sending a chill through an impenetrable exterior.

The crunch of changing leaves breaking under his feet, the wind howling in his ears and clamouring for an outcome even John did not know. His footfalls echoing in a silent park filled with people.

“John I-”

His hand shook as the bow fell.

The wool was soft about John's neck. The blue a darker shade than the bright grey eyes that were held on him. A stolen token from another time and place, a reminder that should have been returned years before but could never quite be removed.

It fell in waves, soft ripples that danced under his fingers and unfurled. His face never dropping as he kept his gaze on the ghost before him, a man who had lived and died too many times to count.

His fingers were steady as he threaded the fabric through his hands, lifted it around and watched it fall onto the exposed expanse of neck. A shiver running through the other man as he tilted this way and that, eyes shifting away, a gentle flush to his cheeks that had never been there before.

His hands were steady,, pulling it closer, tying it closed, a last defence against a winter that might never come now.

If it was the lingering song upon his lips or the touch of a ghost he could not have said.

If the warmth of a sun's rays in his hand or the clasp of fingers that tightened in his hold.

If it was still autumn or perhaps now spring.

The north wind wrapped the falling leaves around them in colour and sunlight and for a moment the years were washed away with something new.

Another soft caress.

A deep baritone that spoke an even sweeter song, rich and melodic and full of promise.

“I'm home.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very sorry. I swear I'll get back to the Orphan fic, but I've been travelling and back to work and haven't had the time. I was working on it when this struck me like lightening bolt from the heavens and nothing was getting done until I wrote it. 
> 
> On that note: I haven't the slightest idea where this came from. As for when-- you can decide. I pictured it in a near future after things have fallen apart and perhaps only just start rebuilding.


End file.
